Roots of the Reformation XI: Crown Control of the Church

The Holy Spirit Window of the Chapel of the Carmelite Nuns
in Christoval Texas--modeled on the window over Bernini's
Altar of the Chair inSaint Peter's Basilica.

We had  been talking about clericalism and the danger it presents to the Church and I want to pick up on that theme both in terms of the anti-clericalism of sixteenth century and rising anti-clericalism in the Church today.  But before we go further down that road, I do want to finish up on Charlemagne and his Reformation in the ninth century. 

I recently wrote that Charlemagne and Pope Leo III (and his successors) had a clear understanding of the respective roles of the pope and of the emperor.  The emperor was to protect the Church and manage its external affairs; the pope was to define the doctrines which guaranteed the unity of the faith and to pray for the Emperor and his army, whose task it was to defend the Church.  Sometimes, however, the Emperor usurped even this somewhat limited role of the pope.  An important case in point was the dispute over the “Filioque”—the line in the Nicene Creed that declares that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father “and the Son.”  

In the original Nicene formulation, the Fathers of the Council of Nicea (325) defined that the Holy Spirit proceeds “from the Father.”  Now, I am not going to get into the doctrinal issue here, but suffice it to say that the decrees of a Council, and especially the first seven Councils, need to be held unchanged unless changed by the Universal Church, i.e. the Churches of the East and of the West.  Individual bishops or even synods cannot usurp the magisterium of the Universal Church which the teaching of a Council represents.  Nevertheless a synod of bishops in Spain, the Third Council of Toledo (589) added the phrase filioque to the Nicene formula, proclaiming that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.  They had no authority to do so, of course, yet it became a popular variation in the Creed in both what is today Spain and France.  In 809 Charlemagne had it added to the Liturgy in the chapel royal in Aachen, the Imperial Capital.

Pope Leo III, in Rome, forbad the addition and had the original formula of the Creed engraved on silver plates with the admonition that it was never to be changed.    Two centuries later, however, the filioque was added at Rome.  Almost immediately it became and still remains today one of the major points of contention today between the Orthodox Churches of the East and the Catholic Church.  The Eastern Catholic Churches in communion with Rome no longer use it in the Creed and in the Anglican Communion and the Lutheran Churches it has most usually been abandoned these past twenty-five years or so.  There is some pressure on the Catholic Church to drop the filioque from the Creed, not as a denial of the doctrine but as a sign of the Catholic Church’s repentance for having unilaterally altered an infallible formula from an Ecumenical Council.   Charlemagne’s interference in this matter brings up a crucial issue and that is the role of the Emperor vis a vis the authority of the Patriarch.  In the East, both in Constantinople and later in Moscow, the Emperors had firm control over the Church, subjecting the authority of the Patriarch to that of the Crown.  In Western Europe there would be a long battle for supremacy between Pope and Emperor—culminating in the Guelf and Ghibelline struggles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries between the Popes and the Hohenstaufen Emperors.  The Popes would eventually assert their authority, at least in matters spiritual, over the Imperial Crown, but that settlement would not hold in England and Scandinavia where the respective crowns would eventually demand authority over the Church in their realms leading to the English, Danish, and Swedish Reformations.  And all that will be dealt with in the future. 

Papal Elections

Yesterday I wrote about the Sistine Chapel and other sites of papal conclaves because many people think that the Sistine Chapel has “always” been the site of papal elections. Part of the problem here is that moderns, and especially Americans, have no sense of history. If something has been done twice in the last fifty years, it is a “tradition” and one presumes that it comes directly from Jesus to the Apostles. We need to develop some good historical sense.
Let’s talk today a bit about papal elections because you may be a bit surprised about how that procedure has evolved and also because it ties into the issue of electing bishops which is something else I would really like to explore. When St. Peter was martyred in 64 AD, the Cardinals did not gather and lock themselves into the Sistine Chapel and then proceed to dump their ballots into a golden chalice placed on the altar from which they would then be counted until one had enough votes for white smoke to signal the waiting crowds that “habemus papam” we had a pope. Indeed, there were no cardinals, no Sistine Chapel, probably no golden chalice, and really not even a “pope.” As for the crowds—hey, this was a time of persecution and the small Christian community in Rome was hiding out to protect their lives. In the early centuries, Rome chose its bishop like other local Churches. The clergy met with neighboring bishops and an assembly of the faithful to elect the bishop. They usually elected one of the principle deacons of the Church, or on occasion a priest. The neighboring bishops would then lay hands on the bishop-elect, consecrating him to his new office. They did not elect a bishop to the post as through most of the early history of the Church, once a man was made bishop of a diocese he could not transfer to another diocese. A bishop was considered “married” to his diocese. This prevented the sort of ambition and careerism which has often been a problem in the Church. As American monsignori joke “no one want to be buried in the Cathedral of Peoria” meaning that many bishops always have their eye on a more important diocese.
It was Pope Nicholas II who at a synod of bishops in 1059 mandated the election of the Pope would be limited to the cardinals. It really wasn’t a departure from the practice of the time when popes were elected by the principal clergy of the diocese of Rome and the bishops of the seven suburbican dioceses. The Cardinal Deacons were the 14 principal deacons of the City of Rome—deacons of churches whose primary function was not a parish but a food distribution point for the needy or, in times of famine, for the general population. The major role of a deacon was not liturgical, but rather care for the poor and the suffering. The Cardinal priests were the parish priests (pastors) of the principal Roman Churches. The Cardinal bishops were (and are) the bishops of those seven sees that surround Rome. Up to this point an important (and actually essential) part of the election of the bishop of Rome was not only the election by the priests and deacons of the diocese, and the confirmation of the surrounding bishops, but the assent of the faithful. The clergy would meet, choose their candidate and receive the approval of the bishops and then present the newly elected bishop for the assent of the faithful. Crowds are fickle, however, and were often manipulated by the various factions—rival family/political groups vying for power—which would sway the election. This left the papacy at the mercy either of the Imperial faction (later called the Ghibellines) or what might be termed the “nationalist” party of the Counts of Tusculum or other local nobility (later called the Guelfs). Nicholas’s reform was primarily to eliminate the influence of the Roman rabble in order to bring stability and good decision making to the process—and it worked. He also wanted, as far as possible, to keep the influence of the Emperor to a minimum. This was part of what historians call the “Gregorian Reform” (after Pope Gregory VII, elected 1073 and the successor but one to Nicholas). By the twelfth century good order had been restored to the papacy and indeed the Gregorian Reform would see some of the best popes in the history of the Church, culminating with Innocent III who, in some respects, may have been the greatest pope in the history of the Church, and certainly one of the most significant.

The image today is the 13th century statue of Saint Peter attributed to Arnolfo di Cambio in Saint Peter's Basilica. It is usually dressed in Pontifical Robes twice a year June 29 the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul (with the triregnum tiara) and February 22 (Hey, George Washington's birthday, what a coincidence) the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter (usually without the triregnum)